Virginia devs honored at the U.K. Writer's Guild awards

The Writer's Guild of Great Britain announced the winners of its latest round of annual honors today, and the award for "Best Writing in A Video Game" was accorded to Variable State's Jonathan Burroughs, Lyndon Holland and Terry Kenny for their work on the studio's debut game Virginia.

What makes this win especially intriguing is the fact that Virginia is a mysterious first-person adventure with no dialogue, which suggests the award is given based on the strength of the game's scripting and non-verbal storytelling.

Virginia was up against Mata Haggis' first-person narrative effort, Fragments of Him, as well as FIFA 17's narrative-driven story mode "The Journey," written by Martin Korda, Matthew Turner and Tom Watt.

For more on how Virginia manages to tell a powerful, affecting story without dialogue, check out the interview with co-director Burroughs we published last month.